IF YOUR job or hobby is deep-sea diving or jet-plane piloting, either you’re good or you’re dead. Watchmaking and diamond cutting call for considerable skill, too. But there are dozens of pursuits less exacting that offer something much needed these days: the thrill of accomplishment.

I have an idea that a lot of people hesitate over hobbies because (a) they think they aren’t skilled enough, or (b) it’s too much work.

Wishbones Made Her Dreams Come True
Scraps from a thousand Sunday dinner tables form the raw-materials for a novel and thriving industry built up by Delphine Binger of New York City. Miss Binger collects the wishbones from turkeys, chickens, and other poultry, treats them by a special electrical and chemical process, inscribes them with special greetings, dresses them up with ribbon bows and sprays of artificial flowers, and sells them as decorative good-luck novelties to accompany wedding, birthday, and graduation presents, and gifts for other special occasions. Among her specialties are wishbones bearing tiny stethoscopes for medical-school graduates.

DON’T ASK ME WHY, but I took these pictures. And now, to cap it all, I’m submitting them, in case your readers might be interested. Tools can’t talk back, and maybe it’s just as well. However, mute as they are, tools make fine animal crackers if they’re touched up with a spot of paint and posed just right. Pliers and clothesline tighteners, hinges and lawn sprinklers can become pleasant little “monsters” that will pose willingly for your camera. We even converted an old furnace damper control into a moose or a strange little creature with an upturned nose, depending upon how you look at him. Almost any tool or piece of junk can be made into an odd being of one kind or another. Best of all. it’s fun for kids as well as adults. Why not open your tool chest and try it yourself?

THE reason that amateur glass blowing is such an interesting hobby is that the work acts as a stimulant to your creative ability. With very simple and inexpensive tools, in a corner of a room or in the attic or basement, you can quickly learn to make dozens of useful and ornamental pieces such as vases, small glasses of different shapes, beverage sippers and other articles of that nature. With further practice and experience you will not find it difficult to make the tiny animal, bird and flower novelties or “whatnots,” which are so popular in the home, and know that the design is original and that a similar article cannot be purchased in the stores.